29 May 2007 2:52 PM

Inverted Class War

Read Peter Hitchens only in The Mail on Sunday

Every few weeks I find myself bicycling in the opposite direction to the Leader of Her Majesty's Opposition, as he heads for Westminster and I pedal towards the Mail on Sunday office. One day I fear there will be a regrettable accident, but so far we have managed to avoid catastrophe. The last time this happened he bawled sarcastically at me "Very fair programme!", presumably a reference to 'Toff at the Top', the documentary on Mr Cameron that I presented for Channel Four.

I was just digesting this encounter when I was confronted with the memorable sight of David Willetts, also on a velocipede, labouring along in his chief's slipstream, spectacles glinting, brains whirring, his sunny Professor Branestawm smile in place as usual. I have to say I worry about him. Intellectuals and machinery do not go well together. I took extra care for the rest of the way in case I met the boyish George Osborne, who also uses this route and once - seeing me hunched on what he regarded as a green, liberal mode of transport - could only boggle and goggle at me. George has much to learn about the harsh realities of life.

Of course, my programme about Mr Cameron (during which I rather pointedly bicycled about the place, so as to demonstrate that bad, reactionary people use bicycles too) could have been fairer. How? Mr Cameron could have made it fairer, by agreeing to be interviewed for it. But his office rebuffed repeated approaches to take part, one of which I know for certain reached him personally, as I took care that it should do so.

And actually - though I am openly and unashamedly biased - I do believe in fairness, to the extent that those I attack should be big enough to look after themselves, and given the opportunity to answer the charges against them. My old friend and adversary Michael Gove took on the hard task of speaking for Mr Cameron in the programme, and was unfairly attacked because he got into trouble while doing so. But he got into trouble because he was loyally trying to defend what he knew to be a weak position. Mr Cameron should have defended himself.

These reminiscences are brought on by the Blue Labour leader's accusation, in a Mail on Sunday article, that his critics on grammar schools are guilty of inverted class war, or some such phrase. Humph. Well, there is a bit of a point in this. There's no doubt that a rich Old Etonian needs to be pretty careful about what schools he prescribes for the middle classes and the poor.

Now, this isn't just me saying so. Listen to the words of Matthew D'Ancona, enthusiastically pro-Cameron Editor of the mainly pro-Cameron 'Spectator', writing in the mainly pro-Cameron 'Sunday Telegraph'. He said: "There is something deeply distasteful about listening to the Cameroons preen themselves over their tough line on state grammar schools, before, without missing a beat, they go on to discuss the selective examinations for top private schools facing their own children."

You may be sure that Mr D'Ancona is speaking from direct personal experience here, and he is dead right. If he finds it distasteful, then Mr Cameron should worry. It won't work to accuse Mr D'Ancona of waging class war, inverse or the right way up. Mr Cameron's Toffishness, and that of his coterie, as I've said before, is important because it blinds him to the growing plight of the striving classes, who don't have his cushion of money.

This policy creates an interesting change in the landscape of scandal and hypocrisy. Tories who paid fees to avoid the comprehensives, used not to be direct hypocrites. Their party had nothing against private schools and was, more or less, in favour of selection and rigour in the state sector - if you didn't look too closely at its record. But now they have dismissed grammar schools as the wrong route to excellence, and endorsed dubious City Academies, they are open to exactly the same jeers as those directed against the Labour grandees who do the same thing or - worse - fiddle their children into secretly selective schools by the judicious use of religion or the purchase of houses in small catchment areas.

Mr Cameron now seems to have pledged to send his children to state schools, which will be interesting to watch. I urge him to convert to Roman Catholicism well before they are 11. For, though the Church of England does some pretty good primaries, it is not so good at secondaries. Cardinal Vaughan, as his fellow left-winger Jon Cruddas can tell him, is an excellent school, but you have to know your Catholic catechism to get in.

I cannot see - by the way - how Mr Cameron's critics' assaults on him can be inverse class war. Surely an upside-down class war would be an attack on the middle class by the upper class? Or on the working class by the middle class? If this were class war, it would be the normal sort, the people below attacking the people above, urged on by the people in the middle. Actually it's not class war at all. It is a straightforward conflict of interest - between politicians who dodge what they think are difficult policy decisions, while being able to afford to avoid the consequences of their cowardice.

Actually, I am by no means sure that a return to selection is that difficult a policy, or that unpopular, which is why Mr Cameron is politically mistaken as well as tactically wrong.

Simon Jenkins, normally one of the sharpest and least conventional commentators, wrote a ridiculous article in the Sunday Times this week. Sir Simon praised Mr Cameron for 'deftly tak[ing] a blow at the old right and speak[ing] the truth all at the same time." He lauded Mr Cameron for his 'aplomb' in 'clearing the decks of intellectual clutter", and compared 'fundamentalist' supporters of grammars with Labour's pro-nationalisation cavemen. This is all very robust and iconoclastic and breezy, but is it right?

Sir Simon asserted that school selection had become 'massively unpopular' by the 1960s. Forgive me for quoting so much from the papers, but they are where our national debate now takes place. Hardly anything ever gets discussed in Parliament any more. Sir Simon made the old claim that the Tories failed to defend grammar schools because they were losing them votes, and may have cost them the 1964 election. Odd, that, given that Harold Wilson, the Labour leader in 1964, would later claim that grammar schools would be abolished 'over his dead body'. Why say that, if they were so unpopular? And I believe there was very strong local opposition in Bristol - and other cities - to the abolition of grammar schools around that time.

I checked the Labour Manifesto for 1964 and it was cunningly ambiguous, offering the mythical beast of grammar education without grammar schools, dreamed of by Anthony Crosland in his 'Future of Socialism' and now being offered again as a 'grammar stream', or rather 'grammar sets' since he apparently doesn't believe in streaming, by Mr Cameron.

Funny that this has never actually worked in practice. This is presumably because you need the whole ethos of a school, not just a few isolated classrooms, to produce the grammar school effect. But it is an old idea. The 1964 Labour manifesto said: "Labour will get rid of the segregation of children into separate schools caused by 11-plus selection. Secondary education will be reorganised along comprehensive lines", so far, so straightforward. But then it added "Within the new system grammar school education will be extended: in future no child will be denied the opportunity of benefiting from it through arbitrary selection at the age of 11" (my italics).

I cannot be sure if the drafters of this document believed what they were saying, but it is quite clear that they recognised that grammar school education was popular and desirable. So they pretended that by abolishing it for some they would make it available for everyone, and they would extend it. How they can honestly have believed that it could be offered to everyone, I do not know. But why was there nobody around to suggest that more grammars could be founded, that secondary moderns could be encouraged to establish sixth forms that the missing technical schools should be built? Why was it abolition or the eleven-plus, and nothing in between?

Maybe I was too young at the time, but I can't remember school selection being a big issue in the 1964 election, or the one after, in 1966, in which I did last-minute 'knocking-up' (badgering voters who had pledged their support but hadn't yet turned up at the polling station, since you ask) for the Labour Party in the back streets of Cambridge, dressed in the uniform of my then Public School. Perhaps there's some evidence someone could produce. Even if it was, selection is certainly not a vote-loser now, after people have seen what comprehensive education does in practice. Recent opinion polls, not apparently designed to produce this result, came up with the clear message that 49% of all voters, and 70% of Tories, now support selective education.

Sir Simon, like so many participants in this debate, seems to think that discontent with selection at 11, and perhaps with there being too few grammar school places, equates to support for the comprehensive system. Sir Simon mocks those who say that you can have selection without the eleven-plus as believing in 'immaculate selection', which is a jolly witty phrase but ignores the fact that Germany does indeed have selection without an eleven plus, and it works pretty well.

As for the transparently silly claim that by shutting grammar schools you benefit the non-grammar pupils, made by so many supporters of this unhinged vandalism, I am indebted to the Graham Brady, Tory Shadow Europe Minister (at least he holds that brief now, but I'm not sure it can last) who has gravely embarrassed Mr Cameron by producing some research showing that selection improves results in all schools in grammar areas, not just in grammar schools.

The reason why this controversy has run for so long is that it matters so much, and says so much about those who take sides in it. Here's a puzzle for you. If selective education benefited the country, even if it was unpopular, would it be the duty of a serious politician to argue in favour of it? I think it's easy, because I cannot imagine being in politics unless I believed first of all in the good of the country.

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Peter's attack on the 1964 labour manifesto may be misplaced. The promise to extend grammar education to other secondary schools may be a reference to the fact that children who went to many of those schools did not have the option of taking O levels in 1964. Indeed there was a school in Wellingborough that was still not doing so when I took my own O levels in 1971.

There were also some unpleasant aspects to grammar schools. The children in the bottom streams often ended up with poor academic records, were neglected by the teachers and were often resentful as a result. There were many incidents of bullying and threats (of course this can occur in any school if no action is taken) and life was not pleasant for many pupils. Btw I know a number of people from my University days who attended the Cardinal Vaughan school that Peter has praised. They are unequivocal that bullying was a problem there in the 1960's and 70's.

By the 80's large numbers of children couldn't even read and write. My contemporaries included some who would read Radical Teacher and say frightening Orwellian things like "If they find it interesting they learn" without any recognition that their job might involve making it interesting.

The current batch of clueless politicians, like most before them, can avoid the difficulties of state school selection by the methods so eloquently described by Peter. Among the Guardianista left it is acceptable to advocate egalitarian schools whilst they send their own children to the best available on their budgets - either public schools or good schools in well to do areas - but, for the rest of us, things have improved since the 1980's. It's not all a national disaster like most Local Authority Childrens Services departments.

Another great, studied article. I thought I raise this point; should schools be be run by local authorities or by themselves? Now, some shires like Kent especially as well as unitaries like Trafford (MP Graham Brady represents Altrincham and Sale West, two towns which are part of this metropolitan council) sdo a pretty impressive job, but bear in mind that some council areas, especially large urban Labour ones (like Derby for example) are selection-free zones, areas where the tripartite system would be vital. The Free Schools idea was a recent rare sensible intiative from the Tories, so maybe something like this? A stronger emphasis on town or district government which regards to education maybe? Apart from Sir Peter Vardy's successful Christian schools, I'm wary of the city acedemies scheme. And what size should secondary schools be? I don't believe that big is always better.

I had the good fortune to be the product of the grammar school system and, thankfully, am now retired.

I used to work as a senior manager for a FTSE 100 company. What surprised me, towards the end of my career, was the low level of educational attainment of young people who had spent many years in the state education system.

We now need to stop fighting the class war and get our act together. We must ensure that the 75% of children who do not go either to a public school or a grammar school get a decent education. This involves streaming ability levels in schools and ensuring that everybody moves at the correct pace. We must ensure that many more children emerge from the system knowing how to read and write properly and how to add, subtract and divide numbers. A major step forward must also be made in the improvement of school discipline. We need to trawl the world for best practice and then imitate it.

We need a clear message from each of the political parties on how they are going to achieve key improvements so that we all know which box to tick when the next general election comes along.

In the next ten or twenty years our present comfortable life in the UK is going to implode as a result of (1) changes in the global economy (2) our feckless inability to face up to key problems and (3) the unintended consequences of many of the foolish decisions we have recently made. Children leaving school in such an environment will find survival difficult and at least deserve the right to be taught to read, write, spell and add up and how to behave with a modicum of self discipline and consideration for others.

I live in Trafford, which has a great selection of grammar schools. My son is soon to sit both an entrance exam and the 11+, trying to get into one or two of them. We also live in the catchment area of an excellent comprehensive. This has an intake of around 25% of children that have passed their 11+, but whose parents prefer to send them there, because it is so good.

Why do people not realise that having grammar schools in the area is good for everybody, as Mr Brady has shown? The children that just fail the 11+ by say 20 or so marks (which isn't a lot) thus attend the local comprehensives. The comprehensives themselves then must have a much higher educational standard than their non-selective counterparts, simply because they intake so many of these borderline children.

And why is it so hard for MP's to realise why we despise them so much for preaching to us about non-selection, when they blatantly choose only the best schools fior their own children? David Cameron lives in a well-to-do-area so his primary schools will be excellent. I can't wait to see his choices when his children reach seconday school age.

What is so annoying is that in most cases these MP's have had the benefit of both a decent upbringing and a decent (usually private or grammar) education. Some of their constituents' children do not have this luxury, and some have appalling home lives. A decent school/education is usually the only thing that will ever make a difference, improve their lives, and give them choices.

Whereas, a shabbily run comprehensive, with no authority or leadership, and run by the pupils for the pupils, will help no-one, decent upbringing or not.

Graham Brady is my MP, and I am delighted that he has chosen to stand and fight, rather than meekly toe the party line (whenever they have actually decided what it is).

I am posting this response to Patrick Hadley's May 28th contribution on both the old and the new Grammar School threads, since it deals with questions raised on each of them.

I am asked to consider the implications of saying "No good school could long survive without selection of some sort". I am happy to do so. On the broadest interpretation, the head must be able to decide what sort of school he or she is running, and must be able to expel (or 'exclude' as for some reason we say nowadays) those who refuse to behave according to the most basic set of rules. It is interesting how expulsion has become extremely difficult in the comprehensive system, with the bog-standard schools compelled to keep on all kinds of pupils they'd dearly love to get rid of. I'd like to see a lot more religiously-based secondaries too - the Anglican Church made one of its many mistakes when it ceded many of its secondaries to the state in the 1940s. The Roman Catholics rightly declined to do so, and the atmosphere of their schools, with the common endeavour required by a religious foundation, has meant that many of them are among the best in the state sector. For what that's worth(see below). They'd be a lot better if they were grammar schools as well as being religious.

But I'll be much more specific. The failure of the tripartite system mainly resulted from the absence of its third pillar. The technical schools were seldom if ever built. The Secondary Moderns, therefore, were hybrids, containing 11-plus failures who - had there been more grammar schools - would have been given an academic education and benefited from it, others who could not have benefited from it but still needed a good basic secondary schooling at least up to 'O' level, and people who were not academic at all, but would have benefited from a mainly vocational curriculum, possibly linked with a proper apprenticeship scheme. We certainly need such schools now. If we had them, we wouldn't need Polish plumbers.

So, the Secondary Moderns and the Technical Schools, had they existed, would have been selective. And they would have been better for it. The pretence that every child is the same is pernicious rubbish and helps nobody. And the bog-standard comprehensives, to which the children go who would otherwise have gone to them, are far, far worse, and help to make the whole system far, far worse.

Mr Hadley also seems unable to climb out of the ditch of believing that a revived grammar school system would be identical to the one of 40 years ago. As I repeatedly say, there is no reason why there should not be many more grammar schools than there were then, provided there were children qualified to attend them. Why should it be one grammar school and three secondary moderns? Why not two grammars, one secondary modern and one technical?

As for Mr Hadley's claim of an increase in attainment, I just cannot grasp why he continues to write as if an increase in the number of nominally good paper qualifications equals an increase in actual attainment. This would only be so if the paper qualifications had a constant value, which they so blatantly do not. The GCSE is not even comparable, as an examination, with the 'O' level, being so different in structure and nature that you might as well compare wombats with porcupines. As for the 'A' level, the exam does take a different form, with far more importance given to coursework, with all the dubious implications of that, And even Mr Hadley grudgingly accepts that there has been grade inflation in mathematics, his own subject (presumably in 'A' levels), so that someone who would have received a 'C' thirty years ago would now get a B or even an A. Well, 30 years ago, a 'C' was regarded as a pretty poor performance. Now, the same standard of work amounts to one third of a potential place at Oxbridge. That is actually very severe inflation indeed, and what is more it is in mathematics, a subject much less open to subjectivity and lax marking than most.

He also tries to belittle the effects of the expansion of university places. Two things have happened to the universities. One, there are very many more of them, and nobody seriously imagines that they are all equal. Second, that even the better and more selective of them have expanded enormously in the past 30 years and have had to dilute their courses as a result. . My own university, York, offered Oxbridge-style tutorials in some subjects in 1970, and First-Class degrees were very difficult to obtain. I do not think either of these things are true now. And I suspect that even Oxford and Cambridge will begin to drop small tutorial teaching in the next ten years, claiming it is too expensive, when the truth is that they are simply overwhelmed by numbers. Mr Hadley's argument is a bit like saying "Many more people live in houses worth £100,000 or more than did so 30 years ago. This is evidence that we all live in better houses than we did then." If you ignore the existence and implications of inflation, then you cannot make any sense of your figures. And he's a mathematician.

To say that "The likelihood of a school leaver being accepted for a university place has increased from about one in ten to better than one in three" is once again to compare two wholly different things while imagining that they are the same. Yes, there are three times as many places. But most of those places are much less academic and rigorous, even in the better universities, than they were 30 years ago. Mr Hadley asks :" Is this really evidence that schools are doing so much worse than they were?" No, it is not. It doesn't actually tell us anything about that . For that we need to look at the evidence we have of actual levels of education among those who have passed through the schools, in the accounts of employers, in the experiences of examiners and of university teachers, and in the sort of research on entrants done by Durham University, all of which suggest that the general level of education is significantly lower, as is the rapid decline of modern language and science courses at university. But nor is it evidence that they are doing better, as Mr Hadley seems to think it is. It is just evidence that there are more university places. His figures about the numbers of undergraduates from grammar and private schools also tell us little. These schools are now a tiny proportion of all schools. The figures on Oxbridge entrance, which hugely favour selective schools over non-selective ones, are rather more telling. Oxbridge still has the capacity to interview and test applicants, rather than accepting a clutch of 'A' grades at 'A'level as proof of a good education. If it were not for blatant political pressure on them to accept more state pupils, the Oxbridge figures would be still more skewed towards independent schools. Again, this was not so when we still had a national selective secondary education system.

It is the same in his response for my request to name the 'good' comprehensive schools. He refers me to the government's own measure of its own success, the devalued examination system. Five 'good' GCSEs for two thirds of their pupils makes them 'good'? If you were checking the quality of restaurants or hotels, would you rather rely on a guide provided by the hotel or restaurant chain that owned the hotels, or on independent judgement? Mr Hadley, I said that the issue was absolute quality, not relative achievement in an examination system which even you admit is inflated. It would be so much simpler if you would just admit that the schools have got worse since grammars were abolished, than throwing up these verbal smokescreens which hide the fact that you are wholly missing the point. Again you insist that bright children don't suffer when stuck in comprehensives, and that comprehensives produce 'good' candidates for university and the professions. But 'good' by what standards? In comparison to what? In comparison to what the grammar schools used to produce, or the independent schools still do? It is like arguing with Humpty Dumpty. there are objective measures for these things. Comprehensives fail all of them, and, as Mr Graham Brady has just established beyond doubt, grammars raise the standards of all schools in their areas. If the mad war against grammars had never taken place, then Kent could by now have opened many more rather than trying to improve secondary moderns . I note that, as I write, the Tories have U-turned on this matter, which perhaps makes my case better than anything else could have done. They tried to abandon grammars. They've ended up admitting that some more could be built, a more pro-grammar policy than any they've had for the past 30 years.

"There is something deeply distasteful about listening to the Cameroons preen themselves over their tough line on state grammar schools, before, without missing a beat, they go on to discuss the selective examinations for top private schools facing their own children." Indeed. And why do the Tories not make some serious attempt to change the terms of public discussion, instead of persisting in their supine complicity with the absurd pretence that a voucher system would constitute a "subsidy" by the state to the independent schools, or, even more absurd, that charitable status has that effect? The truth is the exact opposite. The parents of independent-school pupils are paying for their children's education twice over--a manifest injustice. There are many bright children of less wealthy parents who would succeed in the competition for places at "top private schools", if their parents could afford to pay for their education through fees as well as through taxes--or if they could spend a voucher on the fees. Is it possible that their rejection of a proper voucher system (that is, one that can be used anywhere, not just in the state sector) is explained by the fact that the Cameroons and their like secretly welcome this double payment? The second payment is effectively the price paid for excluding the academically able children of the less than wealthy. In this way, their own children face less competition.

I am posting this response to Patrick Hadley's May 28th contribution on both the old and the new Grammar School threads, since it deals with questions raised on each of them.

I am asked to consider the implications of saying "No good school could long survive without selection of some sort". I am happy to do so. On the broadest interpretation, the head must be able to decide what sort of school he or she is running, and must be able to expel (or 'exclude' as for some reason we say nowadays) those who refuse to behave according to the most basic set of rules. It is interesting how expulsion has become extremely difficult in the comprehensive system, with the bog-standard schools compelled to keep on all kinds of pupils they'd dearly love to get rid of. I'd like to see a lot more religiously-based secondaries too - the Anglican Church made one of its many mistakes when it ceded many of its secondaries to the state in the 1940s. The Roman Catholics rightly declined to do so, and the atmosphere of their schools, with the common endeavour required by a religious foundation, has meant that many of them are among the best in the state sector. For what that's worth(see below). They'd be a lot better if they were grammar schools as well as being religious.

But I'll be much more specific. The failure of the tripartite system mainly resulted from the absence of its third pillar. The technical schools were seldom if ever built. The Secondary Moderns, therefore, were hybrids, containing 11-plus failures who - had there been more grammar schools - would have been given an academic education and benefited from it, others who could not have benefited from it but still needed a good basic secondary schooling at least up to 'O' level, and people who were not academic at all, but would have benefited from a mainly vocational curriculum, possibly linked with a proper apprenticeship scheme. We certainly need such schools now. If we had them, we wouldn't need Polish plumbers.

So, the Secondary Moderns and the Technical Schools, had they existed, would have been selective. And they would have been better for it. The pretence that every child is the same is pernicious rubbish and helps nobody. And the bog-standard comprehensives, to which the children go who would otherwise have gone to them, are far, far worse, and help to make the whole system far, far worse.

Mr Hadley also seems unable to climb out of the ditch of believing that a revived grammar school system would be identical to the one of 40 years ago. As I repeatedly say, there is no reason why there should not be many more grammar schools than there were then, provided there were children qualified to attend them. Why should it be one grammar school and three secondary moderns? Why not two grammars, one secondary modern and one technical?

As for Mr Hadley's claim of an increase in attainment, I just cannot grasp why he continues to write as if an increase in the number of nominally good paper qualifications equals an increase in actual attainment. This would only be so if the paper qualifications had a constant value, which they so blatantly do not. The GCSE is not even comparable, as an examination, with the 'O' level, being so different in structure and nature that you might as well compare wombats with porcupines. As for the 'A' level, the exam does take a different form, with far more importance given to coursework, with all the dubious implications of that, And even Mr Hadley grudgingly accepts that there has been grade inflation in mathematics, his own subject (presumably in 'A' levels), so that someone who would have received a 'C' thirty years ago would now get a B or even an A. Well, 30 years ago, a 'C' was regarded as a pretty poor performance. Now, the same standard of work amounts to one third of a potential place at Oxbridge. That is actually very severe inflation indeed, and what is more it is in mathematics, a subject much less open to subjectivity and lax marking than most.

He also tries to belittle the effects of the expansion of university places. Two things have happened to the universities. One, there are very many more of them, and nobody seriously imagines that they are all equal. Second, that even the better and more selective of them have expanded enormously in the past 30 years and have had to dilute their courses as a result. . My own university, York, offered Oxbridge-style tutorials in some subjects in 1970, and First-Class degrees were very difficult to obtain. I do not think either of these things are true now. And I suspect that even Oxford and Cambridge will begin to drop small tutorial teaching in the next ten years, claiming it is too expensive, when the truth is that they are simply overwhelmed by numbers. Mr Hadley's argument is a bit like saying "Many more people live in houses worth £100,000 or more than did so 30 years ago. This is evidence that we all live in better houses than we did then." If you ignore the existence and implications of inflation, then you cannot make any sense of your figures. And he's a mathematician.

To say that "The likelihood of a school leaver being accepted for a university place has increased from about one in ten to better than one in three" is once again to compare two wholly different things while imagining that they are the same. Yes, there are three times as many places. But most of those places are much less academic and rigorous, even in the better universities, than they were 30 years ago. Mr Hadley asks :" Is this really evidence that schools are doing so much worse than they were?" No, it is not. It doesn't actually tell us anything about that . For that we need to look at the evidence we have of actual levels of education among those who have passed through the schools, in the accounts of employers, in the experiences of examiners and of university teachers, and in the sort of research on entrants done by Durham University, all of which suggest that the general level of education is significantly lower, as is the rapid decline of modern language and science courses at university. But nor is it evidence that they are doing better, as Mr Hadley seems to think it is. It is just evidence that there are more university places. His figures about the numbers of undergraduates from grammar and private schools also tell us little. These schools are now a tiny proportion of all schools. The figures on Oxbridge entrance, which hugely favour selective schools over non-selective ones, are rather more telling. Oxbridge still has the capacity to interview and test applicants, rather than accepting a clutch of 'A' grades at 'A'level as proof of a good education. If it were not for blatant political pressure on them to accept more state pupils, the Oxbridge figures would be still more skewed towards independent schools. Again, this was not so when we still had a national selective secondary education system.

It is the same in his response for my request to name the 'good' comprehensive schools. He refers me to the government's own measure of its own success, the devalued examination system. Five 'good' GCSEs for two thirds of their pupils makes them 'good'? If you were checking the quality of restaurants or hotels, would you rather rely on a guide provided by the hotel or restaurant chain that owned the hotels, or on independent judgement? Mr Hadley, I said that the issue was absolute quality, not relative achievement in an examination system which even you admit is inflated. It would be so much simpler if you would just admit that the schools have got worse since grammars were abolished, than throwing up these verbal smokescreens which hide the fact that you are wholly missing the point. Again you insist that bright children don't suffer when stuck in comprehensives, and that comprehensives produce 'good' candidates for university and the professions. But 'good' by what standards? In comparison to what? In comparison to what the grammar schools used to produce, or the independent schools still do? It is like arguing with Humpty Dumpty. there are objective measures for these things. Comprehensives fail all of them, and, as Mr Graham Brady has just established beyond doubt, grammars raise the standards of all schools in their areas. If the mad war against grammars had never taken place, then Kent could by now have opened many more rather than trying to improve secondary moderns . I note that, as I write, the Tories have U-turned on this matter, which perhaps makes my case better than anything else could have done. They tried to abandon grammars. They've ended up admitting that some more could be built, a more pro-grammar policy than any they've had for the past 30 years.

You are undoubtedly in favour of selection in education considering your unequivocal support for grammar schools but I am not clear if you propose selection for the non-grammar schools. Please can you clarify.

My reading of the situation is that the main problem with schooling in the UK is cultural - too little ambition, too little discipline and too much politics. Leaving the non-grammars in the grip of the state will only serve to prolong their plight. Only through cutting them loose from the state which implies selection from parents and schools themselves can remedy this problem; for all schools not just grammars.

Peter, in response to the suggestion of "grammar streaming", may I submit the following comments, adapted from what I put on Iain Dale's site recently?

Banding, setting and streaming work. We did this very successfully in Birmingham's largest secondary school 30 years ago. I was responsible for helping with the general banding of pupils, and setting (13 classes in each year!) in English. The school didn't start out as a shining success, it was made that way by hard uphill work for years, but gosh it got easier and rewarding to teach in afterwards. The top classes would easily have matched classes from grammar schools. (I know, since I attended two grammar schools.)

You need schools to be large enough so that the classes in each subject are reasonably homogeneous in ability, and to offer a range of teachers who can cater for different levels. I think some primary schools in urban areas might be merged to give this extra flexibility.

Some might worry that "grammar streaming" means the lowest would be disadvantaged, but maximising class sizes in the upper sets can mean small class sizes for remedial groups. And these days, there's more classroom assistants and more cash for them - special educational needs is practically an industry in itself. Even public schools advertise for SEN teachers.

The top end also needs special attention - exceptionally talented children have special needs, too. Even some smaller grammar schools might not be able to cater fully for them, simply by putting them in the top group.

The State system has unfortunately tended to concentrate on constructing a good basic education for the average, plus catch-up for the laggers. The brightest do what's needed easily and aren't stretched, and then use their spare time to get matey with ne'er-do-wells because it relieves the boredom. They need special needs teachers of their own - star trainers.

In my view and long direct experience, the reason so many schools fail is the leadership - and outsiders who undermine what the school is trying to do. If you can teach French to severely autistic children - and I have - you can teach virtually any child that is capable of communication. The keys are discipline and high expectation. I am convinced that it can be achieved even now, and even without caning, though one’s hand does itch occasionally.

Blaming the quality of schools on the children implies that the solution is to abandon the majority to their fate. You wouldn't train a dog in the way that we bring up and educate children; it's no wonder that so many of them are turning feral.

We're still arguing about the same confusion of issues that plagued us in the 60s and 70s. Every life has worth, irrespective of academic talent; there should be opportunities and challenges for all - and this benefits the country, too; people are not equal in ability and cannot be made so; competition raises the game; outcomes will differ, and some will lose, but should try again; some fail because they don't try hard enough; parents can mess up their children; politicians sometimes make disruptive changes merely for their own CVs; the country benefits from an educated elite, if the elite can be taught to contribute to the country's welfare; we don't need a class war when we're in an economic crisis.

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